Summary

I need help writing a 2 page single spaced (12 font) book summary on the key highlights. Also, the five major take-aways and how can I plan to use them to develop yourself and your career.

– INSTRUCTIONS IN THE UPLOADED DOC.

– all the material needed is provided. 

Book report #2 Instructions

Instructions:

I need help writing a 2-page single spaced (12 font) book summary on the key highlights. Also, the five major take-aways and how can I plan to use them to develop yourself and your career.

****Make sure that only the information below is used and paraphrased

Name of the book :
Enablement Mastery by Elay Cohen

Take-Aways
(choose 5)

·

“Sales enablement” requires taking a top-down and bottom-up approach to improving sales.

·

Structure your team of “sales enablement professionals” to align with your firm’s highest priorities and goals.

·

Good enablement results in faster, better change initiatives.

·

Enablers can be persuasive because they understand stakeholders’ priorities.

· They give people what they need to make new initiatives work.

· Enablers emphasize learning, especially peer-to-peer knowledge-sharing.

· They support onboarding programs to give employees a great start.

· Increasingly, enablers practice evidence-based, data-driven decision making.

· Sales teams should discuss their plans, pipelines, opportunities, wins, losses and practices.

·

Enablers leverage appreciation, recognition, incentives and rewards – and take responsibility for a flawless customer experience.

Resume of all chapters (must get information from this section)

“Sales enablement” requires taking a top-down and bottom-up approach to improving sales.

Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff believes in sales enablement. He places it front and center by personally leading his marketing, communications and sales executives through their corporate presentations. In these sessions, Salesforce department heads work toward agreement on a corporate sales message. The approved presentation then goes to the company’s head of enablement who makes sure that every manager and every sales and customer-facing person in the company worldwide – thousands of people – gets “certified” in presenting it to a customer correctly and on message.

“Enablement is the alignment of people, processes and priorities with relevant learning, coaching and communications delivered at the right time.”

Sales enablers work across a company. They know how things get done and how to motivate people. They coach, mentor and take an enterprisewide view of “people, processes and priorities” to help others do their work and achieve better outcomes.

Enablers assemble micro content in various formats that salespeople can access in the flow of their work, just when they need it. Enablers tell stories and help build and reinforce the culture. They design and deliver onboarding programs. They synthesize expert knowledge into learning content of all types, collaborate companywide, listen expertly and plan strategically. Sales enablers do whatever it takes – often receiving little recognition. But if they do their work well, they might eventually rank among the most valuable, best connected and most respected people in their firms, often parlaying their experience as enablers into executive leadership positions.

“Enablement is an organizational mind-set and commitment to readiness and excellence, starting with the CEO and touching every employee in your company.”

All worthy enablers have first-rate communications skills, including facilitation. They typically have multidisciplinary career histories. They can come from anywhere, yet they are hard to find. If you are trying to recruit an enabler, look for people with a career history of helping their colleagues, especially through coaching and mentoring.

“For every 100 employees, you should have an enablement person.”

You won’t often find every competency or experience in a single candidate, but enablers need them all, so develop potential enablers’ skills to close the gaps. Know what behaviors, habits and important competencies make a top-performing enabler. Know their traits, so you can hire more people like them. Enablers should build their reputations within the firm and among its stakeholders. Their abilities to command respect, leverage influence and persuade others are core components of their effectiveness.

Structure your team of “sales enablement professionals” to align with your firm’s highest priorities and goals.

Where you house enablers within your firm and to whom they report matters. The most effective structure depends on your firm’s needs and circumstances. Enablement teams often report to the top sales executive, especially when the firm is in a high-growth cycle emphasizing sales. Sales enablers need a strong relationship with the head of sales so they can work together to develop a clear sales process and methodology.

“Enablement is a companywide initiative requiring a standard operating procedure supported by a clear outline of processes.”

The size of your sales enablement team depends on the complexity of your offerings, the distribution of your workforce and how aggressively you plan to grow. On average, assign one enablement person per 100 workers. In globally distributed, high-growth firms, that might be one per 25 workers. Don’t staff inadequately. Given that upward of 70% of change initiatives fail, enablers’ persuasion, “political savviness” and cross-silo consensus building can make an enormous difference.

Good enablement results in faster, better change initiatives.

Big change rarely happens quickly in large firms. It took Salesforce’s enabler teams 18 months to gain consensus on moving the sales training center from a remote location to company headquarters. To drive change, follow six steps:

“Draft a vision statement” – Create a short, clear, compelling presentation of the challenges your change proposal addresses and its measurable outcomes and benefits.

“Assemble a diverse and inclusive team” – Look for a mix of ideas and perspectives, including people opposed to the change. Include a representative sample of the workforce and stakeholders.

“Build the business case” – With your team, construct a detailed business case, including expected ROI. Examine expenses and savings, including opportunity cost. Ask why this plan deserves priority. Your diverse team should agree on the final version.

“Communicate frequently” – Share the status of the project regularly and consistently – at least weekly.

“Be hands-on with stakeholders” – Stay close to the people whom the change will affect. Meet with salespeople and sales managers, walk them through the change, and explain how they will benefit. Answer questions, and listen.

“Keep the momentum going” – Persevere. Finish strong and stay with the change to make sure it sticks.

Enablers can be persuasive because they understand stakeholders’ priorities.

Consider how to deploy your enablers’ skills as you manage the requirements of your stakeholders, and cater to their priorities. With high-level executives, lead with the big picture, not details. Talk about expected outcomes and other reasons for change. Know what drives the CFO – generally, numbers – or the head of sales, who wants to know how the change will lead to more sales. Ask sales managers and salespeople for their feedback. When you make your final pitch or presentation, control the outcome by having already met with, prepped, and answered the questions or objections of every executive who expects to attend. Prepare as you would for any major sales presentation. Encourage sales managers and salespeople to practice prospect presentations with their peers.

Enablers give people what they need to make new initiatives work.

Organizations spend time and money on marketing if they are launching a new product, but they seldom adequately prepare their employees and sales teams. To get people ready for major change, build an “enablement process map” detailing what needs to be done. Document each element so you can build learning content and plans around the change effort. Successful new product sales initiatives begin with “intimate knowledge” of why customers are buying or not. Build on that “win and loss analysis” to create your “go-to-market” plan. Develop key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics for each stakeholder since they all need thorough knowledge of the firm’s sales process and methods.

Enablers emphasize learning, especially peer-to-peer knowledge sharing.

Work continually to build a system and culture of peer-to-peer learning in which salespeople form communities to trade knowledge, describe best practices, share successes and answer questions. Align learning with career progression from onboarding to retirement. Build learning paths for each job so people can plan their careers based on to their goals. Share instructive customer stories.

“People learn from the best. Create a culture of teams learning together and from each other. Share win stories and winning sales presentations regularly.”

Most corporate learning doesn’t engage its participants. As a result, learners lose about 90% of what they hear within a week. A less expensive way to access better learning involves capturing on video what the firm does. Knowledge expands when executives, subject-matter experts and employees share stories, methods, best practices and wins. Have your sales team record videos about success stories and upcoming plans and goals to create learning content and inspire greater engagement and determination. Salespeople reinforce their own learning when they teach others via videos or in person.

“The enablers who stand out…are the doers of companies. They are the coaches, communicators, mentors and connectors.”

When you learn from a lecture, you retain only about 5% of the lesson; when you learn by doing or writing, retention jumps to 75%. To help people learn better in groups, build in time for group problem solving and discussion. Ask salespeople to deliver upcoming sales presentations and negotiations to the team – live, by live video or by recorded video – and then to ask their peers for feedback and suggestions. Incorporate emerging tools – like virtual reality – for sales pitch simulations. Prioritize training and certification for those who enable sales. Include learning in weekly sales meetings. Give examples of elevator pitches, presentations and structured emails. Create a library of “gives and gets” that salespeople can refer to when prepping for negotiations. Include a FAQ sheet, industry insights and white papers. Feature video clips from senior leaders to reinforce important messages.

“People are motivated by more than just money. They are motivated by life experiences. They are motivated by being able to gift people with rewards, awards and recognition.”

The “SaaS Incentive Compensation Benchmark Report” says 79% of salespeople fail to make their quotas and “14% never achieve even 10% of quota.” Sales enablers must teach managers how to develop their sales teams, balance autonomy and accountability, coach, ask good questions, and listen. When managers coach well, salespeople can learn and improve. Otherwise, they dread being blamed.

Enablers support onboarding programs to give people a great start.

The industry average for shepherding new sales reps until they are productive is more than nine months. Design a “30-60-90-day” onboarding process. Deliver content to new hires before they start. Create exercises that mimic your sales methods. Schedule regular progress meetings with new hires through their first 90 days. Have them shadow top performers on sales calls. Assign a coach to observe and offer feedback on their sales calls.

Increasingly, enablers practice evidence-based, data driven decision making.

Practice a disciplined approach to investing in your enablement resources. Use analytics to set priorities and make decisions based on data and evidence. Get clarity on metrics that matter. Know your firm’s “quota attainment” number – the percentage of salespeople who make or exceed quota. Analyze their habits and those of salespeople who don’t meet quota so you can understand the practices and behaviors of underperforming versus high-performing salespeople. Include your sales team’s “win/loss ratio,” especially versus your competition. Know how long, on average, it takes to start and close a deal and the factors affecting closing. Measure time-to-productivity among new hires, track salespeople’s retention rates, follow employee engagement and monitor reps’ use of learning content.

Sales teams should regularly discuss their plans, pipelines, opportunities, wins, losses and best practices.

Conduct monthly or quarterly “territory planning” meetings and quarterly business reviews (QBRs) in which salespeople share their plans with their peers. Have salespeople present updates on quota goals, including how much they’ve closed so far, the gap and the pipeline. Salespeople should discuss their biggest accounts and most significant upcoming opportunities, including closing strategies for each potential client. These presentations should last about five minutes – followed by feedback and questions. Video them. These information-sharing exercises will improve your pipeline and onboarding; both are sufficient reasons to bake peer-learning into your sales culture. Summarize the meetings, and use the data to show trends and progress in your presentations. Use your data to determine the projected ROI for each opportunity.

Enablers leverage appreciation, recognition, incentives and rewards – and take responsibility for a flawless customer experience.

Reward and recognize your teams frequently and publicly. Share success stories. Align your incentives, bonuses and rewards to fulfill your highest priority: attaining good measurable outcomes. Ensure that customer-facing people – those in sales or customer service – ask customers questions and then listen to the answers, which enable sales discovery. Salespeople should develop an agenda – pre-cleared by the customer – and leave time for Q&A. They also should research the prospect’s company and industry and review bios of the pivotal people they will meet. Reps need to prepare questions before the meeting, take notes, listen, keep the meeting on schedule, summarize outcomes, provide next steps at the end and follow up.

“Enablement is a team activity. Done right, enablement brings teams together in a collaborative fashion to solve problems and improve employee productivity.”

Connect prospects with referring clients by email. Brief the customer who made the referral about the prospect and see what he or she wants. Thank both parties. Let the referring client know the outcome. Encourage salespeople to leave messages and write emails that make recipients feel respected. Include pithy subject lines, friendly messaging, valuable information and a call to action. Have your team write longhand thank-you notes to new customers and to customers who refer others. Handwriting stands out in a digitized world, and people remember it.